Live / Dead

I like a lot of what the Dead did post-1969. This, however, is complete dogshit.

Oh man, did I not enjoy this album. It took me way too long to get through it, and I was left worse for wear. I don't mind Grateful Dead; I actually quite like them. However, this album has left a very sour taste in my mouth, one which I am desperately trying to get rid of.

Unequivocally awful. Why was this even made? I refuse to believe that anyone would listen to this under their own free will... let alone pay money for the displeasure...

This may be an unpopular opinion, but this band is terrible. I felt like I was going to fall asleep listening to the slow crawl of "jamming" - I'd prefer to jam my finger in a door.

This was a ride and to be honest I'm not sure what to say about the album. Its a mix of a lot of things both from song to song but it also switches within the songs themselves. It was a fun listen but not something I enjoy enough to listen to again I think.

Meh

Oh please no, I've heard hippie music before and I hated it... This was no exception...

I've had enough of these purposeless jamming sessions. You would have to take up smoking week to enjoy this.

Let's just say this is not going in my "Stuff I didn't hate in 1001 albums" playlist.

if i wanted to listen to live drunk tuneless yodeling for an hour and fifteen minutes, i'd just walk down 6th street at 2 AM. this is both offensively long and unbelievably meandering and dull for being "handpicked." if i think too long about how many live albums are in this damn book i get legitimately hot and sweaty with rage. say it with me: LIVE. ALBUMS. ARE. THE. PURVIEW. OF. SUPERFANS. why is a member of the average public having this forced upon them? i can think of no more unwilling audience for a live album than anyone but their fans. especially not this rambling incoherent sensory nightmare that felt like it lasted 45 years.

the grateful dead feels like a massive prank that the boomers have played on the younger generations. every time i hear a grateful dead song i think, no way does anyone actually enjoy this music for real... there's just nothing there. no soul, no substance, and the band can't even decide on the same song to play. everyone's noodling around on their instruments and not particularly well. it feels like i'm standing in the middle of a guitar center while middle schoolers holding their first guitar try to play smoke on the water and iron man. after 400 or so albums, i think this is my first one-star review going to a band or artist who isn't a sexual predator. congrats, grateful dead. you did it. "favorites": st. stephen and the eleven both had sections that were interesting

dull dull dull

I hope I never hear another Dead song in my life. Hate them damn tie dye shirts too. 491 albums in and this ranks as one of the worst. Negative score.

1 New year, same old Grateful Dead BS. The second I saw that this consists of seven songs in 73 minutes, I knew this was going to be grueling. I’ll give it this, compared to American Beauty, this isn’t so much country music for hippies as it is jam rock for hippies which, honestly, is actually much more in line with what I expected from The Grateful Dead - and I mean that in the worst possible way. Like, imagine paying money to go to this show just to watch a dude pluck at a guitar for like 30 minutes straight. I guess that must be why the group is associated with psychedelic drugs because I couldn’t imagine making it through this sober. Fortunately, once you make it through the borderline painful slog that is Dark Star (admittedly easier said than done), the series of songs that follow have a bit more musicality to them, but man, those runtimes don’t get much shorter. There’s just not really a ton interesting going to justify the lengths anywhere here - even if you’re able to derive an enjoyable moment out of any given track, the feeling is long gone by the time those 15 minutes are up. I will say, I did get a bit of a kick out of hearing Turn on Your Love Light, but that was mostly because I’m familiar with the song in the form of The Blues Brothers’ cover from the 2000 film - say what you want about the movie, but its corresponding soundtrack is much better than anything you can find here (shoutout to Will for letting me rip that CD like a decade ago). Besides, anything positive I have to say about the track (or anything else here for that matter) is completely counterbalanced by the fact that these guys made me listen to feedback for 8 minutes straight at the end (which equates to roughly 11% of your total listening if you’re curious). In summary, these guys suck. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again - I’m totally willing to concede that maybe I just need to see the band live and/or be on acid to “get it”, but there’s nothing I’ve heard from the group at this point that makes me feel particularly incentivized to try it out.

This was one of the most painful listens on this list (so far)! not because the music made my ears bleed or the songs were bad, it's just the endless improvisational guitar noodling and unstructured "songs" were boring, repetitious and down-right ridiculous. I should have stopped during the opening track, Dark Star which went on way too long, well over 20 minutes. Time better spent doing laundry, filing my taxes or doing my Christmas shopping. Holy smokes, if I was in the crowd during this song I would have been snoozing or taking the time for a long bathroom break. How much drugs do you have to take to enjoy the Grateful Dead? There is no punchline, just an overdose.

First song 24 mins of no thanks. Acid was wasted on the boomers.

Sure makes me wish I was dead

Too depressed to get into this album

I can't get excited about this. I have tried the Grateful Dead several times throughout my life, and now again as the 921st album on this list as well as the second of the Grateful Dead. But for me, it remains a directionless album with messy music and substandard vocals. I still don't understand how this became such a household name in counter-culture.

Definitely not what I thought Grateful Dead would sound like. Got deja vu that I’ve said that before. Anyway, this wasn’t terrrible for a live album (which I largely avoid) but it was terrible from a general music point of view. God I was bored senseless with this.

I'm not big on jam bands like this.

I have very little patience to witness in the unfolding of time the development of matter that becomes a seed, which seems unstructured outside of its shell, that with rain, sunlight, other nutrients and microscopic miracles grows into a plant that in the beginning is so soft, so noodly, it appears to take an entire season or more to grow strong enough to support the bearing of colorful fruits in myriad sizes that are then allowed to grow ripe and somehow do not seem to get utilized by the fauna of the ecosystem but instead remain a little too long past their prime to ultimately be plucked by a free-spirited patchouli wearing human, carried miles home on the wind to the magic bus only to be made into a jam for others in a merry band. I need more focus and pace in my music. If you've made it this far in my purposefully meandering review, trying to evoke the vibe of the album, then maybe you already have a higher tolerance than I do. But if you've seen hippies dance ecstatic and bare of foot for hours in the rain only to wonder how or if you'd ever be on the inside of that inscrutable experience then you might understand why I can't give this album more than 1 star despite the Dead's legendary status and the fact that there are some shining moments, scattered like seeds, within.

It took me three weeks to get through this album

Bunch of noodling and nonsense

My initial thought seeing this album: "damn it, this is going to be a two hour long dad-rock jam session, isn't it?" I was almost spot on. This has to be one of the most bloated and uninteresting records in here. A misguided mess, guised as the pinnacle of "improvisation". All they did was stop playing the cohesive sections of their songs that they rehearsed them let the guitarist diddle around a bit every time. This is the epitome of an album that should NOT be on this list. I was hoping for it to be over the minute it started, what a waste of my time. 0/5

By the end of this album I was glad just to have the ringing of tinnitis in my ears. 1 star or F.

It's ultimately a pretty boring album. I can understand why their shows were primarily enjoyed by people "enhancing" the experience.

If this was my first foray into the world of The Dead, then I wouldn't like them at all either. The truth is that at this point they were still trying to figure out their live presence. And I don't care how legendary the Fillmore West venue is, the production quality of this album sucks. There wasn't anything like a Grateful Dead concert. While true, in this case, that assertion isn't a good thing. Go listen to Europe '72 and see if that doesn't make you want to join the party.

Me gusta el blues!! Pero... Esto es apuñalar al blues y mearse en su cadaver. Hay canciones que no tiene melodia, van a su bola cada uno de los artistas, y en la cancion the eleven me sobran los 11, el ruido, que no musica, de esa cancion es digno de rallar las uñas en la pizarra y rechinar dientes Voy a dejar los auriculares en la papelera para reciclar la basura que he escuchado. 10/10 🤙🏽

15 minutes into the first track and they seem to still be tuning their instruments. At one point I started humming a different song while the Dead were playing something else. I wasn't distracted at all. I only bring this up to say that NOTHING happens on this record. It's just fucking around for like over an hour. The Greatful Dead suck.

This album was important at its time - but now it’s meandering and a slog to listen to. And no, I’m not dropping acid while sitting at my desk at work. I have no problem stating that “Touch of Grey” is a great song though.

Really wanted to like this.

people like this shit?

7 songs, 73 minutes. 6 and 72 if you don't count the last 37 second song...one 12 minutes song on an album is hard to pull off, a whole album averaging that is crazy. This feels like hippie elevator music. Another dreaded double album. The Allman Brothers mastered the jam when they put Mountain Jam on Eat a Peach, St. Stephen feels very similar. The band that spawned Phish, String Cheese Incident and Widespread Panic. Everything feels like an accident so that when there are parts that I like it never lasts and intensifies my dislike for the other parts. Where does one song end and another begin? Only The Dead know. The fake blues man/Jim Morrison vocals are ridiculous coming from a white hippie. It hard to know if it was The Dead influenced by everyone else or if they were doing the influencing but you can hear Big Brother and the Holding Company and later Janis Joplin and The Doors in this. Come on with the song made up of feedback. At least it's appropriately titled "Feedback". Drugged out weirdos going to drugged out weirdo. People sat and listened to this and swore that they loved it, I think they mainly loved drugs. Seven and a half minutes of this is ridiculous. This is one of those instances where a parent says their kid could create Jackson Pollack's work. My kids could make these noises with their karaoke machine, no one is lining up to drop acid and listen to it though. And the one thing resembling a normal song is less than a minute long to close the album out.

I’ve never got The Grateful Dead, and I didn’t get this album.

hard work

Live album

Pointless aimless noodling nothing more to say really.

I dig the Dead, but this era ain't it for me. Take me to Bobby in jean shorts ASAP

20 минутные джемы - это моя слабость

genuinely had to stop sometimes to take a break. This felt like a chore to listen to. I tried to give it my best shot but the 22 minute track length just felt like it was fucking me in the ass and I don't really see how this is psychedelic or crazy or wild even for the time.

This is definitely an acquired taste, I do not have. I’d recommend listening to their album “American Beauty” from 1970 instead.

Boring

Like I said before, live music is great. Live. If I'm listening to a CD, I don't need noise over the top of, in this case, questionable music to begin with. Without the live component, this might have been a 1 just due to a 23 minute rambling opening number.

und nochmals 60er. Ich bin schon beim ersten Track gescheitert, irgendwie kann ich nichts damit anfangen.

Kei Luscht! Nach kurzem reinhören entschliesse ich mich nicht weiter zu hören. Grateful dead und rest in peace.

This might be the worst thing I've ever heard by a supposedly great act. Deadheads always say that the studio albums don't tell the story; the Dead had to be experienced live. This recording disproves that. The Shaggs are better, and I'm not kidding. One star, only because it's not possible to give zero stars.

I will never understand how people find incessant noodling on instruments remotely interesting. Calling this selection of tracks ‘songs’ is a bit of a stretch. Honestly it wouldn’t be so awful if it weren’t for Dark Star which just sounds like they’re testing their equipment. Dark Star’s reputation rings true as it meanders for 25 minutes. Feedback is almost as bad, but at least it’s only 8 minutes of aural torture. This is the type of album where you had to be there and tripping to find enjoyable and since I’m neither, it’s really hard to listen to.

I’m really glad this album is on the list because I’ve never really listened to the Grateful Dead and I know more about their history (through the Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test) and their scene than their actual music. Glad this album is on the list because now I know just how bad it is. What was Christa’s thinking when he called this incredible rock improvisation. This is bad noodling. As a guitarist I get why it’s fun to make music this way. But there are sex acts that are fun to do too that one should not preserve for posterity or charge people admission to. Musically it’s bad. Uninventive. Individualistic. Dark Star is the worst. It’s starts nowhere and goes nowhere. In comparison Yes’ Takes From Topigraphic Oceans has four sides with songs at least as long and there is at least a concept there, some development, some ideas that are being worked. This stuff is lazy. I think The Dead can be good when they tighten up into a proper rock band with that folky edge to them. But then they do this shit. Blech.

Not a fan

Hooray! I finally listened to a bunch of dudes aimlessly noodling with synths for 70+ minutes, now I can die.

Just boring jams where cannabis does the heavy lifting

I literally took three weeks off in order to prepare myself for this listen, I've avoided Grateful Dead skillfully in my life but I felt like I could outrun that devil forever. First a positive: the recording quality is astounding! It sounds so crisp and clear and live and tangible. But unfortunately this might have been a mistake, like when an old movie gets the 4k treatment and it makes it look like a bunch of high schoolers filmed a home movie in their back yard. When every piece of the performance is in High Definition™ then you hear the nonsense just as clearly as the highlights. And that's kind of what this live album is: mostly nonsense. Remember that Family Guy when Peter and Lois start smoking weed, and they think they're giving this great, harmonized performance, but it turns out they were way off and kind of yelling? That's what this sounded like to me: the harmonies were off, the timing was off, the singing was off. Not hugely so, but in HD™ it's more glaring. Members of the band would come in singing the same lyrics but singing them just different enough that you doubt they'd even rehearsed it. Then everyone would decide to guitar solo at once, like a four-way intersection where the stop signs suddenly disappeared. I'm a big fan of King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard, so I can't help but compare the two bands since the one seems heavily informed by the other. And maybe The Dead™ got way better at improvised jamming as a whole group later in their career (this was their first live album release.) But Gizz blows these guys out of the water, handily. When Gizz jams out, it feels like one cohesive unit banding (ha) together to lead the audience on a ride through the beast that is the song. On this album, it feels like four (five? six??) high white dudes making it up as they go with no regard for the other musicians on stage. I really wanted to like this, but it's impossible, I fear.

(-_-)zzz

Nope

What is it with all the self indulgent prog nonsense? 1.1

this is.. not good i dont think i really did need to hear this before i die thought i got through a fair chunk of it on my way in today but saw i only got through the first song.. what a drag favourite song was "And We Bid You Goodnight" because the album was ending <3 1.2/5

Just as I thought, lots of indulgent jangly guitar music. Not for me.

Liked many GD tracks but this live album was not for me

Album Nr. 29 Ich mag zwar durchaus Alben, Künstler und Titel aus den 60igern. Aber das hier geht nicht.

I just can't do it. I wanted to see if I could understand the appeal but it made me feel irritable. It is not for me.

Sometimes it’s hard to listen to the music from this time without the drugs they were probably taking when they played it.

1. dark ztar - 1 2. zt ztephen - 0 3. the eleven - 1 4. turn on your love light - 1.5 5. death dont have mercy - 1.5 6. feedback - 1 7. uue bid you goodnight -1

I can't imagine following this band around.

I'm sure this sounded great in their heads. It's unfortunate that it didn't stay there. This is awful.

I couldn’t even listen to this thing in full; I had to skip ahead several times. Also, one almost 8-minute “song” of feedback is insane. It’s a no from me.

This was the most obnoxious album I have had to listen to yet. The sound was muddy, there was a 23 minute meandering go no where song, 7 minutes of feedback and to end it all a 36 second closer. I hated it so much it actually nearly ruined my day.

Sounded like a cat dying

Nah... Langsom om at komme i gang

Im sure this is amazing for Dead Heads but I just cannot do this.

The soundtrack to when you finally decide to tackle a house project that you really didn't want to be doing, but it's better than sitting around and listening to this shit in silence, and then you realize that you're doing the project wrong and it's all going to shit and it's worse than before and at the same time this ABSOLUTE GARBAGE is blaring and stressing you out and wasting your fucking time Not speaking from experience or anything though haha

Boring jam band noodling. What the purpose of this being on the list?

I have to assume appreciation of the Grateful Dead requires some past experience that makes you look past how grating and annoying their sound is.

Assuming this album would be listenable if I was tripping balls literally at the live show in 1969 but otherwise, nope.

I don't care for live albums and I certainly do not care for live albums that are 75 minutes long. I have never been a huge Grateful Dead fan, maybe its the lack of drugs, but I doubt it. I skipped songs. It is better than a one but not a two; however, I will round down

One of the worst albums on this list. Difficult to listen to, terrible aimless noodling, endless.

God no. I just can't deal with free-form jamming to this extent. I love a lot of prog rock (ELP/King Crimson etc.) and this does have some similarity, but it just feels a little bit too aimless. The musicianship is clearly there; it just all feels like that annoying local band that won't shut up and finish their set.

No

Why are live southern rock shows just so boring? There is nothing interesting or engaging about this, it's just slow and bland.

Embarrassing, tiresome, amateurish music. Circus music played by clowns for the benefit of clowns.

I thought studio Dead was bad. Deadheads must take a lot of drugs to make this palatable.

There is a reason why they solid acid in the parking lot of their shows.

Self indulgent, definitely has the broken clock effect of being occasionally right.

Having listened to this, I must say that I really cannot understand why people used to follow this band around on their tours. Just an hour of nothing

Gave up halfway through. A terrible load of pish 👍🏾

This was painfully boring

hippie boomer shit. the only reason anyone likes them is nostalgia and the only reason anyone liked them back then is because weed could make anything sound good. noodly aimless and god those lyrics are so bloody dated. the vocals lmao. ugh i simply hate it. :) zero stars.

I appreciate that the Dead created the jam band mythos. I appreciate the musicality to their improvisation and their bluesy sensibilities. I acknowledge their centrality to the counter-culture movement of the 60s and their exclusive membership to the Haight-Asbury club. I just don’t like their music. I don’t.

So when I dick around for the guitar for an hour I'm a "public nuisance" and "about to be evicted for noise violations", but when the Grateful dead does it they're "one of the greatest bands of all time" and "make eleventy billion dollars"

Oh, dandy. A live album. Nevermind the live album, this is a Grateful Dead live album, and as a consequence not only is live, it's also nearly an hour and a quarter of noodly guitars and I can find little appeal to it. To be fair to it, the first track is the bottom of a slightly inclined ramping up, going from terrible to tolerable, but there's no way I would ever - ever - elect to listen to this again.